Courier Friends to Follow

ADA benefit moves to Savannah

Team Liberty out of Kiss-a-Pig this year

After a 16-year run, Liberty County doesn’t have a team in the regional American Diabetes Association Kiss-A-Pig Campaign.Busy schedules kept Team Liberty from fielding a team and hosting the annual Friends for Diabetes Fun Shoot at the Dorchester Hunting Preserve.The annual campaign pits teams and individuals from area communities against each other to see who can raise the most money for the American Diabetes Association. The winner gets to kiss pig at a gala each May. The pig is honored for its contribution to the research of insulin.For 16 years, Team Liberty has gone head-to-head with Team Savannah, both raising the most funds and competing in their own big-pig category.Maria Center, director of the Southeast Georgia/Coastal South Carolina ADA, said not having a team from Liberty and the annual clay shoot was a big blow to the campaign.The shoot has been the signature fundraising event for nine years, Center said. She said when news got out that Team Liberty wasn’t competing or hosting the clay shoot, a group of attorneys that calls itself the Savannah Boar Association Young Lawyers’ Team, decided to champion the cause and honor Team Liberty’s legacy.“The tournament is being held in honor of the Liberty County Friends for Diabetes, whose clay shoot has raised $421,000 over the last nine years in support of the ADA’s mission,” Center said.“I attended last year’s Wild Game Supper and Fun Shoot organized by Team Liberty, and I was so inspired and amazed that our team decided to do a shoot in their honor here in Savannah,” Dave Smith, a partner with Brannen Searcy Smith, said “As someone who has lived with type 1 diabetes for 56 years I am in awe of these folks and the incredible work they have done for the ADA,” Smith said.The lawyers’ shoot will be May 10 at the Forest City Gun Club. The fee is $600 for a four-man team and includes 50 targets, 50 shells per person, golf-cart use and admission to an after-party.There will be cash prizes for top team and top male and female shooters. Non-shooters can get into the party for $25.Former Team Liberty contestant and Kiss-A-Pig winner Danny Creasy said, “We are really happy that the Savannah folks were inspired by our work enough to take the ball and run it down the field. We are all working for a great cause — a cure for diabetes.”Diabetes is the nations’ fifth-deadliest disease, killing more than 220,000 Americans each year, according to the Florida Department of Health website.For more information about the shoot, call Center at 912-353-8110 ext. 3091, or email mcenter@diabetes.org.